


in my head, i do everything right

by nightsolong



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: Angst, Death, F/M, I'm genuinely sorry, Normero, alex will never be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 10:05:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11355213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightsolong/pseuds/nightsolong
Summary: They meet up one more time, years and years later when he is old and grey and tired of fighting. He tells her he’s sorry. She smiles, says she knows. But it is too late.Every time, in every universe, he is too late.or: nine times alex and norma almost make it.





	in my head, i do everything right

**Author's Note:**

> alexander romero deserved better. this is me acknowledging that but somehow refusing to give it to him.
> 
> title: supercut by lorde

in my head, i do everything right

(but it is not enough.)

* * *

 

  **one.**

 

The first story is the true one.

 

Alex rushes into her bedroom, gut twisting with the terrorizing thought that  _ something is very wrong,  _ and lunges across the room to grab her body. It is surprisingly heavy, more so than all the times he has held her, carried her, kept her close in his arms. Dead weight, he thinks, and lets out something like a sob.

 

By the time fresh air is circulating through the house and she is outside the bedroom, lying motionless in the hallway, too much time has passed. The poison has already filled her lungs, shut her system down and stolen her away from this world. The gods have her now.

 

He holds her in his arms and weeps profusely, crystalline tears falling onto her pale cheeks, limp arms dangling uselessly as he clutches her tighter and begs for the universe to fix this, to choose someone else, anyone but her. But it is not enough. 

 

It is too late.

 

_ He _ is too late.

 

**two.**

 

The stories all end like this, but sometimes, they have a different beginning.

 

When Alex is twenty-two, he meets a woman named Norma.

 

He is a Marine, stationed in Oceanside, California at Camp Pendleton. They stumble upon each other at a bar and by the end of the night are tangled up in cotton white sheets at her apartment. He thinks he loves her, even then as he kisses her for the first time. He tells her so, weeks later as he toys with the idea of asking her to marry him.

 

But before he can propose, his commander changes his station. Hawaii. He promises her he will return, and he does. But by the time he comes back, it is too late.

 

She is gone. She does not leave a note.

 

It’s okay. It probably wouldn’t have worked out, anyway.

 

**three.**

 

He returns to White Pine Bay after the Marines, takes up a job at the police department. 

 

He’s out on a rookie patrol one night when he spots a light green 1973 Mercedes burning rubber on the rain-slicked roads in the outskirts of town. He pulls the driver over, tries not to blush when she flirts with him shamelessly in order to avoid getting the ticket. 

 

He tells her it won’t work, but it does. As soon as he clears her she speeds off again, leaving him in the dust, a faint smile gracing his lips.

 

(He doesn’t regret it.)

 

**four.**

 

Instead of becoming a policeman, he becomes a firefighter.

 

It’s the most logical job to take, really. He wants to help people, but becoming a cop is following in his father’s footsteps, and he can’t afford to make that mistake. He has to be better.

 

So he is.

 

They’re sent into a burning building one night, an apartment complex that lit up like a goddamn christmas tree after someone forgot to shut off their oven. Alex reaches the top floor before any of his comrades. In the last room on the left he finds a woman, curled up with two young boys in the corner behind the couch. She gasps with relief when she sees him, but the fire has already come too far, burning everything they ever loved to the ground in the blink of an eye.

 

In her eyes he sees relief, but more than anything, acceptance. She has come to terms with her fate.

 

He manages to get the boys out, the older one clinging to his back and the younger one tucked in his arms as he races down the hall and delivers them to safety. His heart is beating wildly in his chest as he struggles to make it back to the woman. But by the time he has reached her, the fire is drowning them, leaping across the walls as thick black smoke fills the air and poisons his already exhausted lungs.

 

In this one, they go out together. He does not know the woman, but he holds her in his arms as the flames creep closer, caging them in like tired, terrified circus animals. She grasps his neck and buries her face in it.

 

“Thank you,” she whispers, even as she coughs against his skin and winces at the heat of the flames nipping at her skin.

 

He dies a hero. She dies a stranger.

 

**five.**

 

But back to the police department. In most lives, he is a cop. It’s in his blood. It’s all he knows.

 

He’s on a drug bust one night, deep in the forest outskirts of White Pine Bay, when it happens. He takes a bullet for his deputy, the way he had been trained to do since day one. But he does not get lucky. The paramedics don’t even get him to the hospital. He bleeds out in a cold, unforgiving forest, watching with pleading eyes as the stars shine above him and twinkle rhythmically, sending out their own futile S.O.S.

 

He is pronounced dead on arrival and put in a body bag instead of an ambulance.

 

**six.**

 

He makes it to the hospital. It’s a miracle. It truly is.

 

But it is the only miracle he receives that night. He is rushed into surgery as soon as he arrives, sent into an OR with Doctor Norma Bates as his surgeon. She and her team fight for hours, resuscitating him and losing him and resuscitating him again, before losing him for the last time.

 

He dies on the operating table.

 

Time of death: 22:17.

 

**seven.**

 

Norma is a doctor, again, and he is her patient, again, but things go further.

 

In this life, he is more charming than he is stoic. His procedure is simple this time - lower back pain surgery, for God’s sake. He jokes about how unmasculine the surgery is, how cowardly, and she laughs and says that he should be  _ glad  _ it isn’t more severe. It’s a routine operation, and its results follow suit. He lives, asks her to dinner the day she clears him. To his surprise, she says yes.

 

But it doesn’t last. Two dates in she tells him she’s been offered an incredible job, one that will allow her to carry out important research and operate on patients that need it desperately. He is happy for her, and he tells her so, but his smile falters when he hears where she is being relocated to. Germany.

 

He’s with her at the airport when she leaves. She blows him a kiss as she boards the plane, and he smiles. She’d promised to call, to let him know how she was doing. But he knows she won’t.

 

(She doesn’t.)

 

**eight.**

 

There’s one where they’re happy - for longer than usual, at least. He proposes, she says yes, they’re married in a quaint yet beautiful ceremony in November. Three months later, she is pregnant.

 

Dylan and Norman are skeptical at the thought of having a sister, but they grow on the idea as time progresses. Alex is in love with her right away. It is everything he has ever wanted: a wife, a family, a perfect life with the people he cares about. 

 

But it doesn’t last. Nothing good ever does.

 

She’s in labor when the doctor looks up at him with a grim expression and says something is wrong, unexpectedly, horribly wrong. Nurses rush in and he is pushed to the side as they take her down to the operating room. 

 

He’s sick with worry as he paces in the waiting room, Dylan and Norman sitting somberly a few seats away. Hours pass. No one comes to give them an update.

 

When the nurses finally do, their faces are solemn and there is guilt in their eyes.  _ Did she make it?  _ he asks desperately, even though he already knows the answer. They shake their heads no.

 

_ Did the baby?  _ The nurses falter, looking at one another uncomfortably before hesitantly shaking their heads again.

 

Alex and Norman let out a sob at the same time.

 

**nine.**

 

Eventually, there is a life that is just like their real story. Almost. She marries him for the insurance, they fall in love. Norman is sick with anger, and in his blinding rage, puts both he and Norma to sleep. But this time, he dies, and not her.

 

Alex is not ashamed to say that he is grateful. He prays for the first time that day, thanks God or Buddha or whoever the hell is up there for sparing her, for bringing her back to him. 

 

But Norma does not feel the same way. When he goes into her hospital room and tells her Norman is dead, that they couldn’t get to the boy in time, she lets out a sob and says that she wishes she were dead, too. She wants to die. She wants to be with him. She screams the words bitterly and thrashes about in bed, the way only a grief-stricken mother who has lost her son does, and refuses to stop even when the nurses hold her down and give her something to calm her down.

 

It tears him up, seeing her like this. It destroys him. 

 

And suddenly, he is ashamed.

 

He stays with her through it all, nursing her back to health and taking care of the motel when she is too depressed to do it herself. He quits his job so he can dedicate himself solely to her. But it is not enough. Nothing is.

 

He has never seen her this sad, broken in a way that cannot be fixed no matter what he does. He gives her everything, but she gives  _ Norman  _ everything, Norman who is dead and buried at the cemetery down the road.

 

In the end, she leaves him. She tells him she will never forgive him for leaving Norman to die, for choosing her instead of him. Some days he fights with her, insisting that he will  _ always  _ choose her, and other days he accepts what she says for the truth that it is.

 

The divorce is settled within two years. She stays where she is, in her cloud of loss and heart-wrenching grief, and he takes up his old job again. When the motel threatens to go under from lack of customers and proper care, he pulls some strings to make sure it survives. It is all he can give her now. 

 

They meet up one more time, years and years later when he is old and grey and tired of fighting. He tells her he’s sorry. She smiles, says she knows. But it is too late.

 

Every time, in every universe, he is too late.

**Author's Note:**

> this was hastily written and only proofread once before posting, so i apologize for any mistakes!
> 
> also: i'm not crying, YOU'RE crying


End file.
